HAVE A VERY HAPPY HALLMARK CHRISTMAS...! BY SANDRA HARRIS.

 

HAVE A VERY HAPPY HALLMARK CHRISTMAS…

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Hallmark Channel is an American cable television network owned by Hallmark Media, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards. The channel broadcasts family-oriented general entertainment programming, including television series and made-for-TV-movies.’ WIKIPEDIA.

Hallmark specializes in movies about single women who find love at Christmas, or families who reunite at Christmas, or families of single women who reunite and find love at Christmas.

For some folks, yes, mainly wimmin folks of a certain age, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a whole bunch of Hallmark Christmas Movies to curl up with on the coldest days.

They don’t mind that the films are often quite similar to each other, conforming perfectly to a formula that nearly always hits the jackpot, or that some other, bitter folks have dismissed the whole genre of Hallmark Christmas Movies as a cheesy bull-shitty money-spinner.

It’s true that the Christmas films make Hallmark more money than any other kind of movie. There’s a ridiculous amount of moolah in these babies. What about the accusations of cheesiness and bull-shit?

Yes, these films can be cheesy and may seem removed from reality at times, but the network is trying to sell you a beautiful dream, not a grim trip to the dole office or to an operating theatre to have your head amputated…

Rather than reviewing a specific film, I’ll try to come up with one of my own, based on what I’ve seen of these movies. (I may have seen one or ten accidentally while scrolling through the stations looking for the, erm, History Channel…)

A lot of the movies are actually made in Vancouver, where you’re guaranteed snow at certain times of the year. No self-respecting Christmas movie would dare show its face without truckloads of snow to adorn the sidewalks and windowsills and the real pine trees in the Christmas tree farm in the lot behind the church…

 ‘The first snowfall of winter for Vancouver usually arrives in December, but can show up as early as November or even October. The season's last snowfall typically happens in February or March although in some years a late snow lands in April. Vancouver is normally free of snow every year from May to September.’

We need a town, a small town or a village, with a cutesie-pie name like Christmas Creek or Mistletoe Falls or Hollyport, something like that. Needless to say, it’s a gorgeous, homely place to live, everyone knows everyone else and, if you’re unfortunate enough to get sick there, you’ll have the neighbours beating a path to your door with enough casseroles and home-made Christmas cookies to start a restaurant with.

Naturally, the town in its festive dress is as pretty as a picture. All the dinky little shops have their decorations up and lights on, and there might even be a magnificent, locally sourced Christmas tree in the town square for everyone, locals and tourists alike, to marvel at with eyes like saucers.

Enter the heroine. About bleeding time, I hear you say. We’ll call her Rachel, and she’s a beautiful brunette because it’s a warmer, richer colour than blonde for this time of year. She has gorgeous big eyes and plump kissable lips and she’ll be trim of figure, but she won’t be getting her knockers out because the channel has a long-standing tradition of upholding strong family values.

Rachel was born and bred in Christmas Town, but left when she was eighteen to go and work in ‘The Big City.’ She and her city slicker boyfriend, let’s call him Kevin, both work in the cut-throat world of advertising. Her career in the city has to be soulless and personally unfulfilling, which will make it all the easier for her to drop it for whatever awaits her in Christmas Town, see?

Anyway, Rachel’s back in her hometown for the funeral of her beloved Grandma Eustacia. She was a game old gal who for many years ran the local Christmas village, a very special tourist attraction for the folks in the towns hereabouts, and the adjoining guest house.

Grandma Eustacia leaves the lot to Rachel, as her favourite grand-daughter. Rachel, with much prompting from Kevin, who has big plans for his girlfriend’s grandmother’s money, reluctantly decides she has no choice but to sell the Christmas village and guest-house. She can’t possibly hold onto it, after all. She doesn’t know the first thing about running a Christmas village. And she’s a city girl, isn’t she? Or is she…?

Enter Chad, Brad, Thad or Zach, the impossibly handsome, Christmas-jumper-wearing hunk who’s been running the Christmas village and guest-house for Grandma Eustacia practically single-handed for the last few years. Maybe he even dated Rachel briefly when they were both in high school together, but it didn’t work out because college, and then life generally, took them in different directions.

Anyway, he manages to persuade Rachel to give the Christmas Village one last festive season to show her what it’s capable of. Rachel, with her advertising smarts, comes up with some terrific ideas to promote the tourist attraction, which really impresses Chad, Brad, Thad or Zach, who, unbeknownst to Rachel, is secretly working on the piece de resistance of the whole shebang; a lovingly restored old-fashioned Victorian carousel to surprise her with…

Amidst the holly and the ivy and the log fires, the hot chocolates and the mulled wines, Rachel and Chad, Brad, Thad or Zach fall passionately in love, leaving the greedy Kevin out in the cold. Rachel decides not to sell the Christmas Village or the guest-house, but to live there forever with her new beloved and make it work, which was what clever old Grandma Eustacia wanted- and foresaw- all along. Clever old Grandma Eustacia!

You get the picture? There’ll be no sex or even heavy petting, because that’s not the Hallmark way. Hallmark even started out as two different religious programmers sharing space on the same satellite transponder, and, while I don’t think they make any actual religious programming, they hold firm to the high moral standards and traditional family values reflected in most of their movies.

So you mightn’t see anyone having an abortion or walking the streets looking for johns in a Hallmark Christmas movie, but you’ll get a big fat dose of Christmas, wrapped up in a big red bow and served with side orders of eggnog, pumpkin pie (don’t worry, folks, they’re Americans!) and cranberry sauce. And, sometimes, just sometimes, isn’t that all we need…?